LIMA – An exhibition of 28 of Spanish master Pablo Picasso’s erotic drawings opens Tuesday at Lima’s Pancho Fierro gallery, giving visitors a look at depictions of naked men, women and mythological creatures in assorted sexual scenes amid one of the hottest summers on record in the Peruvian capital.

The gallery, operated by the Lima city government, is presenting some of Picasso’s most erotic and less inhibited works for the first time in Peru.

The exhibition features 13 pieces from “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” collection and 15 from “The Double Flute” collection, on loan from the Ibero-American University Foundation (FUNIBER).

The two pieces from the first group, created around 1966 during the last years of Picasso’s life, and those from the second group, which were produced in the 1940s and 1950s, show the Malaga-born artist’s craftsmanship in the engraving technique he used in more than 2,000 works.

Among the prints on display are two depictions of the Minotaur, a figure that appears repeatedly in the work of Picasso (1881-1973).

One shows the mythological monster ravishing a sensuous and frail nymph.

FUNIBER’s culture director in Peru, Paola Vaño, told EFE that Picasso sublimated his mature sexuality in these prints during “a very fruitful period in which he reveals himself without veils, with unbounded creativity and unusual freedom, as never seen before in his previous work.”

“All those characters are voyeurs, they are watching a series of sexual and libertine acts,” Vaño said. “There, Picasso allowed his desires and projections to flow.”

The exhibition, sponsored by the Spanish Embassy in Peru, the Peruvian Culture Ministry and the Scientific University of the South (UCSUR), will remain open until March 5.

The exhibition in Lima of works by the Spanish master of Cubism and Surrealism coincides with the 80th anniversary of the first public showing of “Guernica,” Picasso’s most emblematic work.

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